


ya'aburnee.

by incalyscent



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: AND a poem, Canon-Typical Violence, Crisis of Faith, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Historical Accuracy, Love Poems, Lowercase, M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sharing a Bed, Temporary Character Death, gratuitous use of languages, local poet does prose, no beta we die like men, seriously i wrote a ghazal for this please read it, seriously the animus is broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incalyscent/pseuds/incalyscent
Summary: ya'aburnee / arabic origins / literally 'he buries me'; the hope that you will die before your love so you do not have to live without them.in a shower of blood, nicolò’s adversary falls to his face in the sand.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 24
Kudos: 137





	ya'aburnee.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AKL](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKL/gifts).



in a shower of blood, nicolò’s adversary falls to his face in the sand.

they’ve been here before. a hundred times, it seems. the battle rages on, and nicolò takes one step towards the fray. he stops. he turns back.

he doesn’t believe in a vengeful god. he fights for him, because he loves him, but it’s been month after month of blood, taunted and cursed by a foe he just can’t seem to kill. the cross around his neck is heavy. he is heavy.

he realizes now, with the sound of ringing metal in his ears, that his god did not teach him to hate. that was the people. and right now, with the parched earth drinking down blood like a dying man, that the people he’s fighting are just the same as him. fighting for a god not unlike his own.

maybe this man, this unkillable man, his own immunity, was meant to teach him something.

he crouches, rolls his foe over onto his back. his eyes are vacant, the life gone from them.

“destati,” nicolò says. _wake up_.

and the other gasps air like a man reborn.

-

“i have dreamed about you.”

nicolò looks up. they fled the battle, and there was nowhere else to go, except with each other. the fire crackles, dull in the long stretch of desert. the other man’s italian is warbled with an arabic accent, the vowels too far back in his throat. his eyes are still guarded, but nicolò’s sword is within easy reach between them. he doesn’t blame him.

“i’ve dreamed of you, too.”

he thought, visions from god, outlining his enemy. why did people twist their hands around a being supposed to be all loving? why choke that out of him? even here, knowing that they cannot kill each other, each of nicolò’s muscles is wound tight like a bearing line. his maile is uncomfortable but he dares not to take it off.

“mi chiamo yusuf,” yusuf says slowly, and then after some consideration, “al-kaysani.”

“nicolò di genova.”

yusuf regards him for a long beat, then turns his eyes up, so the abyssal night can reflect in them.

“why do you think allah has brought us together, nicolò?”

nicolò’s hand finds the cross about his neck, and even though he can’t feel it through his armour, something in him throbs. he swallows.

“i don’t know.”

yusuf turns his head, regards him for a good, long time, and stays silent. it might be the barrier of language between them, or maybe yusuf just has nothing to say about it. maybe his heart tugs just the same as nicolò’s. he doesn’t know enough about the people he came to fight, and that guilt crushes up under his ribs. how could he hate so blindly? what sort of monster does that?

-

nicolò is ripped from sleep when yusuf pushes up from the floor, right as the sun rises. he snatches at his sword, doesn’t quite get it in his grip on the hilt before he realizes yusuf is praying.

head bowed to the floor, the rising sun gilding the line of his back, the starched white of his robes; nicolò half expects him to sprout wings. he doesn’t know most of the words that drip from yusuf’s lips but he doesn’t have to; he’s said the same almost every day of his life, praised a god no different, asked him things no different.

infidel. heretic. these are the words that nicolò was taught to describe the followers of islam, in order to justify their slaughter.

to be a good catholic, one needs to have more than faith. it is their deeds that make them known by god.

yusuf whispers _alhamdulillah_ and the sound mixes with the scrape of nicolò sheathing his longsword.

-

yusuf takes him back to jerusalem, around the battlefield. there is no one left there to fight, just swaths of blood and a few broken weapons, the stench of blood thick. yusuf lifts his sleeve to cover his nose as his horse trods onwards, sufficiently desensitized.

this isn’t what nicolò wanted to do with his life. the blood, the bodies; this wasn’t in his plan. but there’s no going back - what else can he do with his life, now that it doesn’t end?

he is distracted, complacent, which is why he doesn’t notice the archers. yusuf’s yelp of shock is a millisecond too late; the arrow pierces him, and his yell makes his horse spook and he crumples to the reddened ground.

nicolò can hear yusuf’s voice, barking a loop of arabic, clattering hooves, the vicious clang of metal, all fading in and out. it was a good shot, a clean one, through his chainmail. nicolò coughs blood, spluttering red over his lips, and breathing is like being shot again with each breath.

yusuf dismounts his horse in a cloud of dust, drops to his knees at nicolò’s side. nicolò’s eyes drop to the hilt of yusuf’s sword, still half expecting a killing blow. instead, yusuf’s hands ghost over him, not even really a touch. they stall near the arrow, yusuf’s eyes wide and scared, and nicolò realizes that maybe he was not the only one not born for blood. when it becomes clear yusuf cannot save him, he settles for holding his hand and staying keeled in the dirt.

it is different, when one doesn’t know the thing that they slay. nicolò lets this ring true before he chokes on his last breath and closes his eyes.

he comes back gasping, retching up air as his lungs remake themselves. yusuf had pressed his cooling knuckles to his forehead, clasped in his own, and he looks so, _so_ relieved when nicolò comes back to life that nicolò _feels_ something about it.

“i thought i had lost you,” yusuf says, knowing that he sounds foolish. he drops their hands to the space between them. nicolò is quick to cover them, still sluggish.

“where would i have gone?” nicolò aims for jesting and falls directly on grief. it hits him hard that he can’t go home, not now, not after living and dying and finding no hell or heaven on either side. “i can’t go home.”

yusuf picks up the arrow, from where it had been forced from nicolò’s body. he turns it about in his hands, not worried about the blood. his smile is small, mostly folded up in his eyes. “only from exile can we go home, nicolò. we just have to find it.”

-

nicolò is surprised to learn that yusuf does not live in the city, rather had rented a room in an inn that they now share.

“where are you from then?”

“the maghreb.”

nicolò blinks, bread and cheese halfway to his mouth. “so far from the holy land.”

yusuf shrugs, finishes chewing, his eyes complacently cast somewhere close to their plate. “i could not sit idle and let such an injustice come to pass.”

nicolò must flinch, or suck breath, because yusuf’s face softens to an impossible degree.

“what were you before you picked up the blade, nicolò?”

“a priest.”

yusuf laughs, and nicolò presses his lips to a thin line. yusuf raises his hands. “you and i,” he says, lifting his eyes, glimmering with mirth, “we were meant to teach each other many things, i believe.”

“and why is that?”

“why else would we, sworn enemies, be given this gift, but to learn?”

nicolò regards yusuf for a long beat, long enough that he starts eating again. nicolò doesn’t know why god would have brought them together; at first, the dreams seemed prophetic, a snake in the grass of the enemy. but now, blood still under his fingernails, nicolò doubts he could take a swing at yusuf again.

“how did you learn italiano?”

yusuf shrugs. “my father was a merchant. i took after him for a while.” he smiles. “don’t go spouting poetry. i’m not fluent.”

“you won’t have to worry about that from me.”

yusuf makes a noise, something sly and noncommittal. he prays once more, before they retire to bed.

-

when they both wake up, nicolò is clutching yusuf’s arm and coughing up someone else’s death, shaking from the adrenaline of someone else’s battle, and yusuf is doing the same. and for the first time out of many they wake and their eyes lock, and there’s a long moment before yusuf stretches up and takes a sheet of parchment and charcoal from where he’d hidden it underneath the mattress.

what he pulls out is a collection of delicate sketches, not separated in any real way; some overlap, some faces so close they could kiss. in an empty space he starts carving out another - a woman with long black hair and clear eyes, smudged in dirt and blood - and nicolò is so enraptured by it that he almost doesn’t see his own reflection, smudged in charcoal in the top corner, the only one given its own space, no other lines touching it.

he is bathed in campfire, stark shadows over his face, cutting a cheekbone sharp. he looks softer than he’s ever felt, in that charcoal. he looks weary. not even a mirror, nicolò thinks, has been able to show how _tired_ he is like that drawing does.

“have you seen her too?” yusuf asks, bringing his arm away from the page, briefly, before reaching back down to add just a little more to the woman’s eyebrow. nicolò has seen her, many times, and it’s an odd feeling that makes him reach down to touch the edge of her cheekbone.

“yes.”

“i did not dream of you tonight.”

nicolò’s eyes flick up, to find yusuf already looking at him.

“nor i of you.” 

nicolò almost misses it. yusuf had become some sort of comfort, like the two women they both seem to see. nicolò realizes, slowly, as he sometimes does, that it had been a while since he thought of yusuf as an adversary to strike down. killing him was a habit. killing him is what was expected of him. but now, not too far away from him, he thinks that maybe yusuf knows him better than anyone ever has. and he thinks maybe he knows yusuf too. maybe they really were meant to find each other, just not in the way nicolò thought. maybe it wasn’t hate that god was worming into his heart. maybe it was something else entirely.

“when did you draw this?” nicolò taps the side of his own face, gently etched to the page. yusuf grins.

“ah,” he says, lifting it to better see it in the light, “right after our first battle. you were so beautiful, i thought you were a dream.”

nicolò snorts. his tongue feels thick. “i think i was, on a technicality.” 

“i think i would have recognized you earlier, if you didn’t wear that -” yusuf pauses, screws his face up - “hat?”

nicolò laughs, and despite it being almost at yusuf’s expense he beams like he’s just felt the sun for the first time after winter. nicolò drops his eyes.

“helmet,” he says. _casco_. he can practically feel yusuf commit it to memory.

“much more handsome without it.”

nicolò stares this time, and yusuf’s eyes are wide and honest, the slightest curl at the corner of his mouth. he still doesn’t know what to say, even if he moves his mouth a few times to try. 

“wife at home, nicolò?” yusuf eventually says, and if nicolò is hearing correctly there’s an edge of nerves to his voice.

“no.” his answer is quick. “you?”

yusuf smiles, shoulders dropping. “no.”

there’s a silence that passes, one in which nicolò takes in the sweep of dark eyelashes and a tight curl of hair, in which he is caught staring, but yusuf does nothing but grin and climb out of bed to pray as the sun rises. and nicolò does the same, the other side of the mattress, their backs to one another.

maybe it was never meant to be hate. maybe it’s something else entirely. nicolò doesn’t know which one is scarier.

-

“you should hate me, you know.”

“you’re right. i should.”

-

they grow close. closer than the church would have deemed possible; in a matter of weeks they are inseparable, much past toying with the idea of going their separate ways, for what reason neither of them could come up with.

“they’ll think i died a crusader,” nicolò says, on the topic of family, “it’s probably for the best.”

he starts to learn the language, in the market stalls, cowl over his head to hide his complexion from the unrelenting sun and suspicious eyes. he learns the names of fruits, _toffah_ and _clementine_ and _iaymoun_. he learns how to haggle, how to jest, and the people in the market stalls smile at his accent, and at yusuf, who is usually standing beside him.

what he learns the fastest, though, are the phrases that pass most commonly through yusuf’s lips. _bismillah_ uttered before he eats his first bite, _subhan allah_ breathed at the sky as it changes from blue to orange, maybe again as it dips into velvet. _assalamu alaikum_ grinned at him in greeting. the first arabic that nicolò uttered with any confidence was _walaikum assalam_ in response, and yusuf couldn’t keep the joy from his face, no matter how much he scrubbed at his mouth.

at home they are scared of the name of god, but here, allah is in everything, tenderly held in the mouth of his children, and somehow, that is freeing.

the script is harder, the lettering looping and forgien, but there is a patience in yusuf that nicolò would have thought lost on the battlefield. many nights are spent with nicolò’s fingers wrapped around the brush, yusuf’s hand over it, guiding him through sharp angles and gentle slopes of another alphabet. those memories are bathed in candlelight, warm and safe.

there are some words yusuf keeps for himself, things he tacks on to the ends of the phrases he answers nicolò’s clumsy attempts at the language. he calls him _ya amar_ and _ya helo_ and _habibi_ and only grins when nicolò asks what they mean.

“nicolò,” he says one night, while nicolò pours over a parchment, “why are you learning?”

nicolò looks up. they had moved around many times, further and further from the front lines, and this room is small and cramped, but free from the heat. “you mentioned you were a poet?”

“i _implied_.”

“i want to know if you’re any good.” 

yusuf snorts. “inshallah.”

“i swear it.”

“i’ll write you something, then,” yusuf says, sobering slightly, if only to smile more in his eyes than his mouth, “and you can read it back to me when you can.”

“sounds fair.”

-

it isn’t even a particularly significant moment, when nicolò realizes what yusuf was yelling, back when he was shot when they first met.

_he’s my friend! allahu akbar, he’s my friend!_

-

yusuf spends the next few days placing words to paper, then packs it away as they head to the next settlement over. it is dark by the time they get there, but the desert is clear, the stars and the moon gilding everything in silver, guiding them. looking up, they are the same stars nicolò has back home, only now he knows a few more names for them.

he washes the dust off himself in the nearby river while yusuf goes in to negotiate their board for a night. it is good to unwrap himself from the linen, now that the sun is gone, the cool water a welcome reprieve from the heat.

there’s a woman across the water, someone he only notices once his hood is down and his blue eyes exposed to the world. he is quiet, freezes, and even though her eyes are the only part of her showing he knows she’s looking at him. it’s far from the warring front, but he’s sure missionaries have been this far in; they look at each other for a long time.

how long has it been? nicolò hasn’t felt the effects of age since he died that very first time at yusuf’s blade.

she is filling up a jug of water at its edge, and it isn’t so long before she is paying nicolò no mind. if only in that simple disregard he feels _something_ , tight in his chest. a belonging in a landscape once thought so harsh and violent; full of sinners and savages. in this moment he only finds those qualities in himself.

yusuf is quiet when he comes back to him, sitting on the cracked earth. he leans just a bit to get into nicolò’s eyeline, pulling the cloth covering his mouth down to reveal his smile.

“what are you thinking about, my friend?”

nicolò turns his eyes up river. the moon bounces in his vision.

“do you think we will ever die, yusuf?”

yusuf sits back, eyebrows lifting into a disheveled hairline. he takes a while to think about it.

“inshallah,” he says quietly. _if god wills_ . he says it differently than the way nicolò has learned means _no_. he says it with a mix of hope and dread. nicolò reaches, puts his hand over yusuf’s, and feels him go more still than the air.

“i feel like i have been _blind_.” nicolò says it in arabic, the language spilling past him like the river, somehow so much better at expelling his grief than the italiano. yusuf blinks, and then his eyes go soft. “no god of mine would want me to kill in his name without knowing the sin of the people at the end of my sword.”

yusuf swallows, takes nicolò’s hand more securely, his touch a hammock of comfort.

“a mistake people on both sides made.” he bumps their shoulders together, stays leaning, solid and warm. “we are fortunate. we get to repent for the things we’ve done. that’s the second chance he has given us.”

“it feels lonely.”

“the sun is alone, and still it shines.”

-

that night, they dream of those two women again, curled up against one another on a mat of reeds, saying nothing with all the words in their eyes. yusuf draws them, half cast in shadow, and then the building, its roof stark against the sky, overhangs curling sharply.

“do you want to find them, nicolò?”

nicolò is quiet for a moment. “do you think they are like us?”

“i have to believe.”

nicolò folds his fingers over yusuf’s knuckles. together their hands look like they’re praying. “let’s find them then.”

-

they use the silk road; yusuf recognized the architecture from scrolls of art he once studied. it is many days and many nights to get to where they are going. it has been longer still since nicolò saw his family.

“do you miss them?” yusuf asks, out of the blue, over dinner. they hadn’t managed to find lodging so for tonight this stone outcrop is their home. the bread is a bit stale and the fruit dried.

they haven’t talked much about their families, save for yusuf’s father being a merchant. truth be told, nicolò hadn’t seen his parents in a while before he joined the crusade. he rolls one shoulder, the other hand holding a skin of water.

“no,” he says simply. yusuf regards him, long and slow, but there isn’t judgement in those eyes. there hasn’t been in a good long while. “do you?”

“yes,” yusuf answers immediately, “i am not used to being alone.”

“you’re not.” nicolò feels more earnestly in those words than he has praying this past little while. “you won’t be, ever again.”

yusuf stares just a little bit longer before he smiles, soft in the lines around his eyes, and returns his attention to his meal. his skin is a shade of blue in the night; once again, nicolò finds himself thinking about angels.

-

it gets cold, long after they’ve gone to sleep. it feels like nothing, for nicolò to worm a little closer to yusuf in the dark, and when yusuf puts his arm around him and tucks his nose to the back of his neck, nicolò does not remember knives, or blood. he only remembers yusuf, as he knows him now.

-

they wake when the sweat sticks them together. they journey is long, so they spend as much time as possible on their horses, packed up and moving.

the next time one of them dies, there are no sides.

they pause by an oasis for the horses to drink and to cool themselves off when someone grabs nicolò. he is kneeling by the water and their weight crushes them down; despite the arm around his throat, nicolò manages a hand back to claw at an eye until his assailant loosens his grasp.

he is still gasping for his breath, throat sore and bruising when yusuf is upon them, grappling, snarling, dragging the bandit away from nicolò, kicking. nicolò struggles on his feet, hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword when there’s a flash of metal and a yelp, and the bandit scrambles to his feet from where yusuf had wrangled them in a heap.

yusuf does not get up, and nicolò’s vision funnels to a very cold and sharp point.

the bandit comes back for him - his eyes are wild; he wasn’t expecting much of anything, probably. this man probably just wanted food or coin, but the blade in his hand flashes red and nicolò lunges for him, grabs him behind the head and sends his face crashing to his knee. nicolò stops the hand that comes to maim him, twists the wrist to send the bloody knife clattering to dust, and then sweeps the legs out from underneath the other man to send him sprawling, disoriented, to the ground, and then nicolò is upon him.

it takes longer than he thinks it will to squeeze the life out of him - nicolò doesn’t have the range to pull his sword and the knife skittered out of reach - but the fury snaking under nicolò’s skin makes it seem faster than it is, he’s sure.

wrath is a sin, but he was told to kill on the crusades. doesn’t it take some sort of anger to kill another? nicolò isn’t sure what’s true anymore, hasn’t for a while, but he does know that this man and this knife will not hurt yusuf any longer.

_yusuf_.

sound comes rushing back and he can hear the pained wheezing closer to the water. nicolò scrambles up to his feet and then directly to his knees beside yusuf, who reaches for him and finds purchase on the hem of his tunic. there is a bloody gash in his stomach; he will die slowly and in agony, and both of those notions sit sick and heavy in nicolò’s stomach.

“yusuf,” he says, his voice raspy and small, when yusuf can’t seem to hold his eyes open, “stay with me.”

yusuf laughs, and then regrets it, face pulling tight with pain.

“ahbak, nicolò,” he says suddenly, like he can’t get it out fast enough, his eyes opening wild and wide. “ahbak, habibi.”

and then the breath leaves him, his eyes still open, head rolling to the side. nicolò covers the hand in his shirt with his own, the other going to cradle yusuf’s stubbled jaw.

“destati, yusuf. _destati_ .” _wake up_.

he waits what feels like an eternity, knelt in the dirt, blood pooling by his knees. there is a horrible moment in which he thinks yusuf isn’t going to come back, and inside he goes blind with panic for a split second, right before yusuf gasps and splutters and rolls to the side to spit blood and retch up nothing but air.

when he flops back, nicolò breathes a laugh of relief, bites his lip, not knowing why tears sting his eyes.

“alhamdulillah,” nicolò utters, and then leans down and kisses him, more sure of it than he has been of anything since he met him.

(he’d kissed him once, already, back when they were still fumbling through differences in culture - yusuf had gone in to touch their noses together in greeting and nicolò had pecked him on the lips, like he had done to countless other people. yusuf had blinked, and nicolò had apologized profusely and they had laughed it off. but nicolò would be lying if he said that he hadn’t thought about it every day since then.

and this? oh, this is different.)

still, it’s short and stilted with adrenaline, and it’s only a few seconds before nicolò is rocking back on his heels. yusuf’s jaw is slack, his eyes wide and searching, and nicolò barely has time to say _forgive me, i-_ before yusuf is pulling him back down with a hand to the back of his neck to press their lips together once more.

for once nicolò does not think of the sin or the sinner. there is nothing but the brag of his heart singing hymns in his chest, yusuf’s skin warm under his hands a better penence than he could think up on his own. and yusuf touches him like he could commit him to memory, like he can put his hands inside him, like he already has, and in that instant nicolò knows the taste of heaven.

love. it tastes like love.

-

“will you tell me what it means now?”

they are curled face to face now, noses touching, and yusuf has done nothing but stroke his knuckles over the curve of nicolò’s cheek since they lay down to sleep.

“hmm?”

“that name you call me. what does it mean?”

yusuf’s eyes are tired, but not weary; they fold up at the edges when he smiles.

“one i love. one who loves me.”

-

yusuf has to crawl over nicolò when the dawn begins to rise to pray, and though it rouses him he can’t find it in himself to mind. yusuf faces makkah meaning he is gilded gold as the sun rises, and he says _allahu akbar_ so quietly, he must think nicolò is still sleeping. the murmured arabic is smooth as silk across his lips, and nicolò watches him in a post sleep haze, eyes hooded, feeling warm in a way he didn’t think he knew anymore.

yusuf takes so gracefully to his knees that nicolò wonders how he could have ever thought he wasn’t holy. there is such piousness in the way yusuf’s nose is laid to the ground, his murmured praise. there could be a hundred gods, a thousand, and nicolò is starting to believe that each prayer to each one would be as holy as his own. heaven and hell knows he’ll have to keep that to himself. but for now, his spirit sings. watching another man pray, he feels closer to god than he has in a long, long time.

yusuf finished his second sujud, and then looks right into nicolò’s sleepy eyes while he says _assalamu ʿalaikum warahmatullah_ and nicolò smiles, and the sun is warm, and the day is fresh and new.

-

they travel for many days, and sometime within them, nicolò finds a square of parchment in his saddlebags not belonging to him. on it, the arabic is scrawled in a practiced hand, the verses coupled not unlike lovers on the page. nicolò watches yusuf pretend not to notice he’s found it. for an unknown reason, nicolò can’t bring himself to sit down and read it.

-

her name is andromache and she is the most intimidating thing nicolò has ever seen. she was softened by his dreams, he now knows; before him she is streaked with grime, her face set in stone, and something so old in her eyes nicolò forgets the name of god for a moment when he looks into them. quynh is beside her, as it seems she has been for millenia. her face is soft but her eyes are not. they stand right where the rocky crags of desert melt into soft green grass and snow-capped mountains, a place of transition; something is a weight on nicolò’s chest but he can’t put a name to it.

like it’s a challenge, andromache winds her fingers with quynh’s, her chin lifted in an ageless defiance. slowly, softly, yusuf steps up behind nicolò and tucks his arm around his waist, presses his lips to his linen covered shoulder. the tension melts from andromache’s shoulders. quynh smiles. 

-

quynh takes yusuf down to the river, right where it crashes over the edge of a mountain. even so, their laughter rings true over the rush of water. yusuf speaks to her in french, and nicolò knows just enough to know he is recounting their travels detail by perilous detail. nicolò smiles. he doesn’t care how soft he looks. 

andromache is next to him. she’s been watching him watch yusuf. they are content in their silence, as if they have known each other for years.

“you are lucky to have found him so quickly,” she says, in an italian so old it still holds hands with latin. nicolò pulls his gaze away from yusuf to look at her. she doesn’t look jealous. if anything, grief picks apart her features. if nicolò had not spent too many years looking for guilt in strangers, he doesn’t think he’d be able to spot it.

“you looked for her for a long time.” it’s not a question. he can see it in the set of her body, leaned forward, wanting to be as close to her as she can for the rest of time.

“i did.”

there’s a silence in which nicolò’s eyes are drawn back to yusuf. yusuf catches him and winks, deft hands smooth where he polishes his saif. nicolò averts his eyes again, suddenly warm. he can sense andromache’s smile, just small, even if he is not looking at her.

“i’m glad it’s you,” she says softly, “i think the world could learn a thing or two from someone like you.”

-

andromache tells them that they can die.

she says it so casually, but there’s a particular way that her eyes go glassy when something hurts that nicolò has learned so quickly. nicolò has not felt real fear since the first time he choked death out of his lungs but he does it now, and some new instinct has him reaching for yusuf’s hand. and he holds it and brings it to his lips. and yusuf’s eyes are soft and brown and then nicolò isn’t afraid anymore.

“i used to think it was god,” he says.

“oh, it is, amore mio,” yusuf says, “without an end, what reason do we have to be brave in love?”

-

in their hovel of stone, nicolò lays awake with yusuf at his back. andromache and quynh are sound asleep across the fire, the flames dancing across their hair. he is the only one awake and doesn’t mind; the crackle of the fire the only conversation he needs. he isn’t alone. he snuggles back against yusuf’s chest and even in sleep it is his instinct to hold him closer, to nose at the back of his neck and tickle his ear with his curls.

they could die so that they wouldn’t forget to keep living. which is why nicolò fishes out the parchment he was given so long ago from his pockets. the paper is worn where it had been rubbed soft by his clothes, folded and unfolded dozens of times but never read.

and he unfolds it. and yusuf’s steady hand reads him this:

i think some time ago i forgot what hands were made for; for loving  
and holding, as all living things do, if you will be the thing that buries me.  
  
my whole spine begs for something to curl against - my whole life i bent,  
darling, won’t you hold me askew? even if you will be the thing that buries me?  
  
good things exist, and in your breath i find another, in your kiss i find salvation;  
though these years will not be few, won’t you be the thing that buries me?  
  
i look at you, and suddenly everything is poetry; the bow of you lip,  
the tired shuffle of your step, your eyes so blue; you will be the thing that buries me.  
  
for once i do not write about god, or rather, i do in the way i see him in the shape  
of your shoulders in the orange sunset hue. you will be the thing that buries me.  
  
o wielder of my heart; o gentle thing in the night, i have not been so entranced  
watching another creature since the hawk flew and you will be the thing that buries me.  
  
it is not enough to say love; there are no words in which i can write, no tongue  
beautiful enough. this will be my dying coo - that you will be the thing that buries me.

there’s something hot pressing up nicolò’s throat, even as he takes the hand resting steady on his stomach and kisses it.

“did you like it, caro mio?”

nicolò turns in yusuf’s arms, lets his hand trail to cup the curve of his cheek. yusuf’s eyes are still hazy from sleep. nicolò surges forwards and kisses him, once, twice, until they are both breathless and the stone hurts their elbows.

“yusuf -” nicolò is too choked up with emotion that’s all he can spit against yusuf’s lips. he doesn’t have to. yusuf leans their foreheads together and lets the hand cupping nicolò’s cheek slide down the delicate skin of his throat to press sure and strong against the center of his chest.

“promise me.” his voice is brittle, but wracked with conviction. nicolò swallows.

“yusuf -”

“ _promise_ me,” yusuf says again, bowing into his infliction, “ta’aburnee.”

nicolò covers yusuf’s hand with his own. “lo prometto.”

yusuf smiles, small, with something other than happiness in its edges. his wings are in the folds around his eyes, nicolò has decided. 

“nei tuoi occhi c'è il cielo,” he says softly, and watches yusuf’s face twist in that particular way it does when he’s trying to hide his bashfulness.

“habibi,” he says, hooking his heel around the back of nicolò’s calf, “what did i do to deserve you?”

nicolò is quiet, just searching in yusuf’s eyes. eventually yusuf breathes half a laugh and noses against nicolò’s cheek.

“when i first died, i thought allah had abandoned me,” he says, “i thought he didn’t want me. i asked him what i had done to displease him. i was foolish then. because i was kept living so that i could meet you.”

“that’s what you believe?”

“yes. with every fiber of my heart. i am not allowed to die until i have loved you for as long as you deserve.”

-

the next morning the air is sharp and crisp. nicolò wakes before anyone else and stays still like snow to keep yusuf sleeping at his back. when they rise they all dress and eat, and go out to stand in the sun.

“where to now?” yusuf says. andromache lifts her eyes to the jagged horizon.

“east,” she says simply, before she mounts her horse. yusuf smiles, lifts his shoulders.

“east, then,” he says to nicolò, like it’s a secret.

“i’ll go anywhere as long as you are there to keep me warm at night,” nicolò says. yusuf raises his eyebrows, but the grin on his face is like the sun.

“i am rubbing off on you.”

“perhaps,” nicolò says to yusuf’s back as he climbs onto his horse. in his budding day something feels new, not like a rebirth, not like the crucifixion but the days between; something budding; something undeniably there that only has time to grow.

nicolò thinks about how limitless he feels as he watches andromache and quynh yield their horses close enough together to touch hands. he still yearns for that, the familiarity in which those two women move. he thinks he’ll get it.

and he’ll get time to repent for the sins he’d committed for the word of god in another man’s mouth; not again will anything other than his heart tell him what is right and wrong. and the first thing he knows is right is love in all its forms.

he takes that and lets it manifest. he has thousands of years to do right by himself. longer still to do right by yusuf. yusuf, who swivels in his saddle to beam at him before turning his face to the sun.

when god said, _let there be light_ , the whole world illuminated, incalescent. when nicolò looks at yusuf now, he thinks he can understand how that felt. 

**Author's Note:**

> incalyscent-writes.tumblr.com


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